Art Almanac congratulates Emmaline Zanelli, the recipient of this year’s $15,000 the churchie emerging art prize.
Judge Sebastian Goldspink, a Sydney-based independent curator and the curator of the 2022 Adelaide Biennial: Free/State, said, “The winning video work is a choreographed montage of the artist with her Nonna in suburban Adelaide. Drawing on the aesthetics and politics of Italian Futurism, Zanelli evokes memory through movement and intergenerational knowledge through exchange.”
Emmaline Zanelli, Dynamic Drills, 2019–2021, three-channel video projection with sound, 00:31:52. Courtesy the artist
Goldspink adds, “Zanelli’s Dynamic Drills (2020–2021) is reflective of an Australia that I want to endorse: pluralistic rather than defined by one type of ‘Australianness’.”
“Her work encapsulates many of the striking ideas in the show: technology as a mediator, an artist’s relationship to and disconnection from their background, an endearing vision of humanity, artists processing the world through making, working with community and non-artistic collaborators, and an engagement with temporality.”
“It is an incredibly rich work. It’s interesting, considered and beautiful. I hope that audiences spend time with it to experience its narrative.”
Additional winners include Emma Buswell, awarded the $5,000 Special Commendation prize, sponsored by Fardoulys Constructions. Her knitted garments, After Arachne, 2020, record major moments from 2020, both public events and the artist’s personal experiences. “There’s a wonderful humour in this work,” said Goldspink. “Contained in the jumpers is a record of passing time, which has been so malleable over the past few years. The work directly engages viewers because we all remember the incidents the artist has selected – such as the bushfires – and they prompt us to recall our own thoughts and feelings.”
Emma Buswell, After Arachne, 2020, wool yarn, metallic thread, hand knitted cardigan, beanie and handmade counterfeit Gucci cardigan, dimensions variable. Installation view: ‘the churchie emerging art prize 2022’, Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane. Photograph: Joe Ruckli
Goldspink used Buswell’s practice to reflect on the exhibition. “It is a very human show”, he said. “We are on the cultural precipice of AI and other disruptive technologies entering our lives and there is a battle for our humanity. Against this larger threat, there is something beautiful in the jumpers’ humble and diaristic look at what is happening in our world.”
Norton Fredericks and Kevin Diallo each received $1,000 Commendation Prizes, sponsored by Madison Cleaning Services. Fredericks’ Identity Landscape, 2022, uses native plants to dye soft, largescale felt art. Diallo’s Ode to Zouglou, 2021, enlarges and decorates YouTube screenshots of Zouglou dancers, a dance-oriented style of music that emerged from the Ivory Coast in the mid-1990s.
This year’s exhibition presents the work of twelve early-career artists from across the country, working in media spanning painting, textiles, video and more.
Curator Elena Dias-Jayasinha. Dias-Jayasinha said, “this year’s entries boldly speak to the issues of contemporary society: systems of authority, identity, culture, place and sustainable artistic practice.”
“Despite tackling confronting issues, the works remain grounded and personal, and hint at an optimistic future.”
the churchie emerging art prize 2022 is on view at the Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane, until 1 October 2022.
